Currently available Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) Direction Finding (DF) systems have relied upon 2-18 Gigahertz (GHz), cavity-backed spiral antennas. These cavity-backed spiral antennas are bulky, expensive and not amenable to conformal mounting. For example, currently available Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) cavity-backed spiral antennas may be about 2 inches deep, and may include a layer of absorber material to absorb the back-wave radiating off the spiral. Although these currently available COTS cavity-backed spiral antennas may have excellent 2-18 GHz Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR) and gain patterns, they may suffer from the effects of hand assembly, which drives up the price for the phase-matched sets required for ELINT DF systems. Further, these currently available COTS cavity-backed spiral antennas may not meet desired specifications for ELINT DF systems.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide a spiral antenna suitable for implementation with ELINT DF systems which obviates the problems associated with currently available spiral antenna implementations.